How To Set Up GUI On Amazon EC2 Ubuntu server

Amazon EC2 Linux servers do not come with GUI, all the operations have to be done using ssh client like putty. So if you wish to have a GUI for your Amazon Linux instances, you can achieve it pretty easily. Once you installed the GUI essentials on your server, you can access it via windows remote desktop client. If you are using Linux, then you can use VNC viewer as a remote desktop client. In order to have a GUI, a lightweight LXDE desktop has to be installed on your server.

LXDE

Specially designed for cloud-based servers.

Lightweight GUI for Linux

Better interface

Multi-language support

Supports standard keyboard shortcuts

Fast performance

Prerequisites

A running Ubuntu ec2 instance.

Security group inbound traffic configured for ssh and RDP access (22 and 3389)

Getting Started

Step 1: Connect to the server using ssh client putty. How To Connect Ubuntu Server Using Putty

Step 2: Make sure that RDP port is enabled on the Ubuntu instance in which you are going to install lxde. Update the server and install lxde using the following commands.

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sudo apt-get update-y

sudo apt-get install lxde-y

Step 3: Install xrdp to establish a remote desktop connection since you can’t have a GUI using putty. Use the following command to install xrdp